The Foundation will make all efforts to select impartial Jury members. Attempt will be made to keep all proceedings confidential. The cost of organizing the Topical Committee and Final Jury meetings and the necessary reviewer charges at the ground level will be borne by the Foundation. Personal interventions of all kinds and enquiries from the candidates or those being considered at any level is strictly discouraged.. Some members of the Final Jury will oversee the selection process which will have three tiers:

First-tier: At this tier applications received from the applicants through advertisements in the newspapers and recommendations made by a group of ground level experts (whose number may vary from time to time, although they may not be less than eight experts). The Samman Processing personnel of the Foundation will carefully scrutinize all such books recommended and place only eligible cases before the Second-tier Committee.

Second-tier: - This tier consists of Two Topical Committees - one for the original writing and another for translated works. Each such Committee will have 3 to 5 experts from each area (genre/source languages etc). These Committees will consider the recommendations of the first-tier, and, if necessary, could also consider other books in the concerned categories. The Samman Secretariat will ensure making copies of the short-listed books available before the Topical Committee Members actually meet. The short-listed books will be ideally sent to these experts beforehand. In case a member would like to add a new entry to this list, it will be his/her responsibility to procure at least one copy of the book being recommended, and send it to the Samman Secretariat, or bring it to the meeting. Both Committee meetings will be chaired by the Chair-person of the Jury as selected by the Foundation.

The topical committee members for each category will read through the books that have come up from the first tier, and short-list 3 books / authors for the Prabodh Samman and make appropriate recommendations pointing out the merits of the work. If necessary, these meetings will last for a day or two.

If a book is added to the list by the Zonal Committee Members, the Samman Secretariat will screen the same in respect of the rules of the award before forwarding the recommendations to the Final Jury of 11 or 15 members, as the case may be.

Third-tier: The Final Jury will decide on the basis of the recommendations of the two committee of experts of the second-tier. Certain ground rules could be laid out at present, but many such decisions are left to the discretion of the Final Jury. For example, some working principles or ground rules could be laid down here:

(i) Given a tie between a work of original creative writing and a critical work, the preference will be given to the former, i.e. creative writing.
(ii) Between translation and original work, preference will be given to the original work.
(iii) In the event of a tie between a writer/scholar belong to older generation and another who is much younger, preference will be given to the former. It is difficult to lay down any age difference between the two and that decision will be left to the final jury.
(iv) In the event of the younger writer/scholar being critically ill, he/she will be given preference - irrespective of age difference.
(v) The members of the final jury should opt out of the committee, in case his/her name is being considered by the Foundation (which may emerge from the second tier recommendations). The Foundation will contact him/her asking him/her to either opt out of the Jury (in which case the short-listed name(s) will be considered), or else give up the chance to be considered.

C.
Award function:

The
award venue which will shift from city to city in different
years so as to cover all those cities where Maithili received
important boost in its journey to the present status. The first
award ceremony is to be held at Patna on December 12,
2004. The awardee will be paid travel money and hospitality
to reach and receive the award. Award functions will be held
jointly with local Maithili organizations, and - besides dignitaries,
the office-bearers of the Foundation will also be involved in the event.

D.
The Apex Awards Committee:

Swasti
Foundation is grateful to Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh, Director,
Central Institute of Indian Languages to have accepted our request
to act as Honorary Chair of the Apex level Awards Committee
for a period of five years. Two names of the Jury other than that of Professor Singh appear in the next paragraph. There will be ten to twelve other members
of the Committee whose names will be made public only after
the decision on award is made. The other members of the
committee will either completely or partly rotate from year
to year.

E.
Submission of an Entry/Application/Recommendation:

All
letters or forms as given in this web-site (at http://www.swastifoundation.com/prabodh2.asp
which is downloadable) along with a copy of the book must be
sent by name to either of the following Jury members of the Awards Committee: (i) Mr. Pramod Kumar Jha 101, Anand Palace, Near Alpana Market, New Pataliputra Colony, Patna 800013, or to (ii) Mr. Ramlochan Thakur, KC-88, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700 091.

All
forms of solicitation or attempts to influence the decision
of the Awards Jury will disqualify the author/translator/scholar
concerned.